"first London exhibition, God's Children, at the Mall Galleries in October 1992. The original painting of ""The Singing Butler"" was displayed at Aberdeen Art Gallery in February 2012, the first public exhibition for 20 years. The Singing Butler The Singing Butler is an oil-on-canvas painting made by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano in 1992. It sold at auction in 2004 for £744,800, which was the record at the time for any Scottish painting, and for any painting ever sold in Scotland. Reproductions of ""The Singing Butler"" make it the best-selling art print in the UK. The painting measures by . It"
"in Britain. On 21 April 2004 the original canvas of ""The Singing Butler"" sold at auction for £744,500. It had been rejected in 1992 by the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Vettriano has studios in Scotland and London. He was represented by the Portland Gallery, London from 1993 to 2007, and counts Jack Nicholson, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Tim Rice and Robbie Coltrane amongst his collectors. To date, five books have been published about Jack Vettriano, the most recent of which, "" Studio Life"", was published in March 2008. In February 2009, Vettriano launched Heartbreak Publishing and his own London gallery,"
"ten years. Heartbreak Publishing, Vettriano's own publishing company, produced a boxed set featuring signed, limited-edition prints of all seven paintings to mark the 75th anniversary of Sir Malcolm Campbell's final World Land Speed Record. The Bluebird paintings were auctioned by Sotheby's at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire on 30 August 2007, and made more than £1m in all: the most expensive was ""Bluebird at Bonneville"", bought for £468,000. His easel paintings cost between £48,000 and £195,000 new. According to ""The Guardian"" he earns £500,000 a year in print royalties. Vettriano's 1992 painting, ""The Singing Butler"", has been the best-selling image"
"who founded the Stills Gallery for photography in Edinburgh in 1977 and Murray Johnston (1949–90), who was its director (1982–86). Notable practitioners in Scotland included the American Thomas Joshua Cooper (b. 1946). More recent exponents who have received acclaim include Pradip Malde (b. 1957), Maud Sulter (1960–2008) and Owen Logan (b. 1963). Since the 1990s, the most commercially successful artist has been Jack Vettriano (b. 1959), whose work usually consists of figure compositions, with his most famous painting ""The Singing Butler"" (1992), often cited as the best selling print in Britain. However, he has received little acclaim from critics. Contemporary"
"umbrellas against the weather. The dancers wear evening dress: a dinner jacket and a red ball gown; the woman also wears long red gloves but appears to have bare feet. The butler is also formally dressed, while the maid wears a white apron and clutches her hat. As a contemporary cultural icon, ""The Singing Butler"" has been compared to Grant Wood's ""American Gothic"". Vettriano has described the painting as an ""uplifting fantasy"" and chose the subject after being complimented on his paintings of beaches. He added the servants to balance the composition. His work has been widely criticised by art"
"goal."" - Charlotte Lester. The Siren (Waterhouse painting) The Siren is a painting by John William Waterhouse. The painting depicts a siren sitting at the edge of a cliff, lyre in hand, staring down at a shipwrecked sailor floating in water, who in turn is staring up at her. According to the William Waterhouse's website, this picture was painted in 1900 and is now part of a private collection. The estimated sales price for the painting in 2003 was one million pounds. ""The Siren He listened in thrall to the song of the siren, Her voice like a star as"
"The Siren (Waterhouse painting) The Siren is a painting by John William Waterhouse. The painting depicts a siren sitting at the edge of a cliff, lyre in hand, staring down at a shipwrecked sailor floating in water, who in turn is staring up at her. According to the William Waterhouse's website, this picture was painted in 1900 and is now part of a private collection. The estimated sales price for the painting in 2003 was one million pounds. ""The Siren He listened in thrall to the song of the siren, Her voice like a star as it flew through the"
"were part of a touring exhibition that opened at the Kirkcaldy Museum in Fife in March 2010. Vettriano worked with the Italian photographer Fredi Marcarini, both on a series of photographs for the 'Homage à Tuiga' exhibition and on a tripytch of portrait shots. In May 2011, Vettriano collaborated on the exhibition 'The Ballroom Spy' with the photographer Jeanette Jones. In collaboration with fellow Fife native Stephen Anderson of Commercial Spirits, Vettriano launched Jack Vettriano Gin, a spirit product featuring four of Jack's paintings: ""The Singing Butler, Billy Boys, Along Came A Spider & A Kind Of Loving."" The brand"
"as a vagary of the artist. Today ""El Jaleo"" is considered to be one of John Singer Sargent's most memorable works. El Jaleo El Jaleo is a large painting by John Singer Sargent, depicting a Spanish Gypsy dancer performing to the accompaniment of musicians. Painted in 1882, it currently hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The painting was inspired by a five-month trip Sargent made through Spain and North Africa in 1879, which also yielded a smaller oil painting, ""The Spanish Dance"" (Hispanic Society of America). Chronologically and thematically, the painting is related to a series of"
"selling for £155,000. Vettriano was also asked by First Minister, Alex Salmond to create his official Christmas card ""Let's Twist Again"". The original painting and limited-edition prints later sold at auction for the benefit of four Scottish charities, raising £86,000. Divorced from his first wife, Vettriano divides his time between homes in London, Kirkcaldy and Nice, France. In 2004, he was awarded the OBE. He has claimed inspiration for his paintings in: ""25 years of sexual misbehaviour"". In 2010, he told ""The Independent"": ""I live in a world of heartbreak... I just seem to be more creative when I'm in"
"song titled “The Melancholy of Departure” on their collaborative album ""We Begin"". The Melancholy of Departure The Melancholy of Departure (1916) is a painting by the Greek-Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. This painting was created after de Chirico returned to Italy from Paris to join the Italian Army in World War I. During this time de Chirico was moving away from the bright open scenes of his previous work. He was now focusing on more abstract combinations of objects and indoor settings, and seeking to paint the hidden meanings behind the surface of things. The themes of travel and"
"El Jaleo El Jaleo is a large painting by John Singer Sargent, depicting a Spanish Gypsy dancer performing to the accompaniment of musicians. Painted in 1882, it currently hangs in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The painting was inspired by a five-month trip Sargent made through Spain and North Africa in 1879, which also yielded a smaller oil painting, ""The Spanish Dance"" (Hispanic Society of America). Chronologically and thematically, the painting is related to a series of works Sargent painted during a subsequent stay in Venice; these, too, include dramatic light effects, exotic models, and restrained coloring. Impressed"
"The Song of Love The Song of Love (also known as Le chant d'amour or Love Song; 1914) is a painting by the Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. It is one of the most famous works by de Chirico and an early example of the surrealist style, though it was painted ten years before the movement was ""founded"" by André Breton in 1924. It depicts an outdoor architectural setting similar to other works by de Chirico at this time. This time however, the main focus is a small wall on which is mounted a Greek sculpted head and a"
"Director of Sotheby’s and from 2003-2007 was Chairman of Sotheby’s Olympia. He also took on responsibility for the single-owner sales department in 2006 and became Deputy Chairman, Sotheby’s UK in 2007. As Sotheby's director of country house sales in the UK, Lord Dalmeny has been behind the rostrum and on top of the gavel for some of the most high-profile auctions in Europe, including the Duke of Devonshire's sale at Chatsworth House and the 2004 record sale at Hopetoun House of Jack Vettriano's painting ""The Singing Butler"" for £744,800. In 2013, Lord Dalmeny rode in the Queen's carriage at Royal"
"classical art and a disappearing age. De Chirico uses the rubber glove as a mold of a hand that implies the void of human presence. The buildings set up a scene that is reminiscent of the cityscapes of De Chirico’s past. The Song of Love The Song of Love (also known as Le chant d'amour or Love Song; 1914) is a painting by the Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. It is one of the most famous works by de Chirico and an early example of the surrealist style, though it was painted ten years before the movement was ""founded"""
"The Concert Singer The Concert Singer is a painting by Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), depicting the singer Weda Cook (1867–1937). The work, commenced in 1890 and completed in 1892, was Eakins's first full-length portrait of a woman. It is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. ""The Concert Singer"" was one of a series of portraits Eakins painted of Philadelphia natives who were prominent in science and culture, with the intent of producing major showpieces for exhibition. The painting exemplifies Eakins's desire to truthfully record visual appearances with ""historical value."" Eakins drew, painted, or sculpted at least twenty-two works that dealt"
"who cares, he probably makes more money than Damien Hirst anyway."" In October 2005, after the original of ""The Singing Butler"" sold for £740,000, it came to light that Vettriano had used the artists' reference manual ""The Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual"" to form his figures, using Irish actress Orla Brady for the 'lady in red.' Alongside fellow Fifer, author Ian Rankin, Vettriano put in a cameo appearance in a video with Scottish indie band Saint Jude's Infirmary made for BBC Scotland's ""The Music Show"". The video was filmed on Portobello Beach in Edinburgh and included visual references to two of"
"also called Heartbreak, which exclusively represents him, but still promotes younger artists. In March 2010, ""Days Of Wine And Roses"" was opened by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond at the Kirkcaldy Museum. The exhibition then transferred to Vettriano's gallery in London. On 24 March 2010, Sir Jackie Stewart presented Vettriano with the Great Scot of the Year Award. The award ceremony was held at the Boisdale Club in London. The award led MSP Ted Brocklebank to file a Motion in Parliament calling for Vettriano's contribution to Scottish culture to be recognised. In April 2010, seven out of ten paintings by"
"of the most influential British artists of the century. After a tour of Europe Wilkie was increasingly influenced by Renaissance and Baroque painting and he became most famous for his anecdotal paintings of Scottish and English life. The first indication of this direction in his was his illustration of ""The Gentle Shepherd"" (before 1797). His ""Pitessie Fair"" (1804) was based on Robert Burns poems ""The Vision"" and ""The Holy Fair"". His work on themes of Scottish everyday life included ""Village Politicians"" (1806), ""The Blind Fiddler"" (1806), ""Distraining for Rent"" (1815) and ""The Penny Wedding"" (1818). His most famous work was"
"748 guineas. The painting is held at Tate Britain, London, and is valued by experts as worth at least £30 million. Ophelia (painting) Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed in 1851 and 1852 and in the collection of Tate Britain in London. It depicts Ophelia, a character from William Shakespeare's play ""Hamlet"", singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark. The work encountered a mixed response when first exhibited at the Royal Academy, but has since come to be admired as one of the most important works of the mid-nineteenth century for its"
"the gallery open. Vettriano donated a portrait of Zara Phillips , entitled ""Olympia"", to Sport Relief in 2008. The painting went to a charity fund-raising auction, selling at Bonhams for £36,000. In 2010, Vettriano created a postcard – alongside names such as Tracey Emin and Florence Welch – as part of a British Airways campaign for Sport Relief. The postcard raised over £2,000. Also in 2010, Vettriano helped to raise money for the conservation movement Elephant Family by participating in an auction of donated elephant sculptures and models. Vettriano's elephant, ""The Singing Butler Rides Again"", was the highest bid-for lot,"
"painting that now stands at the original site, within the Palladian architecture of the Benedictine refectory on San Giorgio Maggiore. The soundtrack features music and imagined dialogue scripted by Greenaway for the 126 ""wedding guests, servants, onlookers and wedding crashers"" depicted in the painting, consisting of small talk and banal chatter that culminates in reaction to the miraculous transformation of water to wine, according to the Gospels the first miracle performed by Jesus. Picasso's ""Guernica"", Seurat's ""Grande Jatte"", works by Jackson Pollock and Claude Monet, Velázquez's ""Las Meninas"" and Michelangelo's ""The Last Judgment"" are possible series subjects. Peter Greenaway Peter"
"and general design. It took Eakins nearly two years to paint ""The Concert Singer"". Cook posed for him numerous times, three or four times a week for the first year. Each time she did, Eakins asked her to sing ""O rest in the Lord"" from Felix Mendelssohn's Elijah so he could observe her throat movements; the portrait's specificity is such that some scholars have interpreted Cook as being shown in the act of ""forming the ""e"" sound in the word ""rest""."" The opening bars of the aria are carved in the wooden frame of the painting. Eakins later wrote: ""I"
"Vettriano failed to sell at Sotheby's spring auction of Scottish pictures. Those that sold did so for half their previous prices. Art experts suggested that the monetary value of Vettriano's works needed reassessing. In February 2011, it was announced that Vettriano's self-portrait ""The Weight"" would be displayed at the re-opened Scottish National Portrait Gallery from November 2011, the first time he had exhibited at a national gallery. Deputy director Nicola Kalinsky said Vettriano was ""a figure we have wanted on our wall for a while for obvious reasons"". First Minister, Alex Salmond said of Vettriano, ""He is a wonderful artist"
"reflection. He continued to look at his reflection until he died. A ""narcissus"" flower grew on the spot where he died. The painting is in oil on canvas and measures by . It forms part of the Victorian collection in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, having been purchased by the museum in 1903. Echo and Narcissus (Waterhouse painting) Echo and Narcissus is a painting by John William Waterhouse, dating from 1903. It illustrates the poem ""Echo and Narcissus"" from Ovid's ""Metamorphoses"". John William Waterhouse (1847–1917) was an English painter who, because of his style and themes, has"
"of considerable talent and achievement and this is a magnificent tribute to the special place he holds in the hearts of people in Scotland."" In May 2011, 'The Ballroom Spy' exhibition opened at Vettriano's gallery Heartbreak - a new exhibition by Vettriano in collaboration with the photographer, Jeanette Jones. In July 2011, the exhibition transferred to the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, which was viewed as a controversial choice by many. In January 2012, menswear brand Stefano Ricci launched its Spring Summer 2012 collection with a campaign inspired by the work of Jack Vettriano. The SS 2012 catalogue,"
"most famous being the miniature portrait in the National Gallery (1819), the pen-and-ink sketch, ""Keats on his Deathbed"" (1821), and the oil painting of the poet reading, ""John Keats at Wentworth Place"" (1821–23). A later painting, ""Keats, at Hampstead, when he first imagined his Ode to a Nightingale"" (1851), is also notable. In the 1860s Severn produced a number of copies and memory portraits as Keats's reputation continued to grow. The most influential of Severn's early Italian genre paintings are ""The Vintage"", commissioned by the Duke of Bedford in 1825, and ""The Fountain"" (Royal Palace, Brussels) commissioned by Leopold I"
"clerk sing. Two dogs are visible, one is Graham's own, which joins in the singing. The other is Trump, Hogarth's dog, which is shown wearing Graham's wig, holding a scroll, and reading from a sheet of music propped against a wine glass. A steward, holding a plate of fowl, looks out of the painting at the viewer with a smile, and drops gravy down the back of the chaplain's neck. The painting has several political and social allusions in Hogarth's satirical style. Cabin scenes in oil are rare, and Hogarth's is considered by the current owner, the National Maritime Museum,"
"Ophelia (painting) Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed in 1851 and 1852 and in the collection of Tate Britain in London. It depicts Ophelia, a character from William Shakespeare's play ""Hamlet"", singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark. The work encountered a mixed response when first exhibited at the Royal Academy, but has since come to be admired as one of the most important works of the mid-nineteenth century for its beauty, its accurate depiction of a natural landscape, and its influence on artists from John William Waterhouse and Salvador Dalí to"
"in the Lotharingia region of northwest Europe in the mid 9th century, now in the British Museum. In 1749, George Frideric Handel wrote an English-language oratorio ""Susanna"". Susanna (and not Peter Quince) is the subject of the 1915 poem ""Peter Quince at the Clavier"" by Wallace Stevens, which has been set to music by the American composer Dominic Argento and by the Canadian Gerald Berg. American artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) painted a modern Susanna in 1938, now at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. He consciously included pubic hair, unlike the statue-like images of classical art. The fable"
"song in June 1957, inspired by two paintings by Marc Chagall. He had planned to go to the sea with Domenico Modugno, but while waiting for Modugno to show up, Migliacci started drinking wine and eventually fell asleep. He had vivid dreams, and when he woke up, he looked at the Chagall paintings (reproductions) on the wall. In ""Le coq rouge"" was a yellow man suspended in midair, while in ""Le peintre et la modelle"", half the painter's face was coloured blue. So he started penning a song about a man who dreams of painting himself blue, and being able"
"many other European artworks of the twentieth century, animals playing musical instruments. In this case it's a goat playing a violin. The painting also shows a man hanging over the head of the bride with his hands on her veil, a church which stands in the background almost as an afterthought, a man playing a flute, a girl with pigtails, a fish with arms holding a candle and a chair, several more buildings, and a rooster. In the 1999 film ""Notting Hill"", Julia Roberts' character Anna Scott sees a poster of ""La Mariée"" in the home of Hugh Grant's character,"
"reflects an American appreciation for singing as a manifestation of high culture. Unidealized, Weda Cook's figure is depicted as substantial and sensuous. It is revealed by a light that creates form, depth, and produces ""the painting's profoundly poetic mood"". It is possible that Eakins first saw Cook perform at the Art Students League of Philadelphia on February 22, 1889, and was inspired to paint ""The Concert Singer"" after seeing a photograph of Jules Massenet at an organ, with his wife open-mouthed, singing. Though anonymous female (and angel) singers were often shown with their mouths open in medieval and Renaissance art—as"